


Burns Sweet

by The_Magical_Crawdad



Category: Homestuck, Mobsterswitch - Fandom, Problem Sleuth - Fandom
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Scofflaw is not a nice man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 08:59:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Magical_Crawdad/pseuds/The_Magical_Crawdad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eventually, the tremors stop and he is in control completely again. Bored to hell and back and in control, just like always, he thinks bitterly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burns Sweet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ealasaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ealasaid/gifts).



> Woops I accidentally have no idea how cocaine works. Forgive me?
> 
> Also this may or may not be utter shit, draw your own conclusions!

The drug burns sweetly in his veins, pounds through his blood like a live wire in time with his heart. He languishes on the floor, spread-eagle, fingers twitching absently as he thinks dazedly. He doesn’t do this often, would rather prefer not too, but sometimes,  _just sometimes Inny_ , it’s a real need, a distraction he can sink into and forget himself for a while. He listens to his body as it goes heavy and lax, as relaxation coils around the hard shell of activity he wears like armor. It seeps into the joints, the faintest cracks, down into him, to the bone, spreads over him like a warm blanket under his skin.   
  
Eventually he hauls himself to his feet. His heavy limbs limit his movement, but that’s okay, it’s rather nice, the couch looks divine. He falls into it and shuffles himself around slightly, until he’s stretched out on it and listening to the quiet sounds of the street out side.  
  
Well, what little of the sound can penetrate into the safe-house.  
  
He laughs, but the sound gets caught up in his throat, bubbling gently despite his best efforts to move it. But it’s fine, that’s fine, because the world is so sweetly heavy right now and he does not care for anything but the roar of his heartbeat in his ears. He thinks nothing, and it’s sweet, _so sweet_ ,  he never wants it to end.  
  
He should have remembered how bad coming down was, in hindsight. But as they say, hindsight is always 20-20. He groans and grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes, watching the explosion of stars and colours until the roiling in his gut subsides. He drags himself off the couch and into the small square room that serves as the kitchen, and very decidedly does not revisit what he ate for breakfast in the sink. He runs water, lets it pool in his hands and run over as he fights to get himself back under control.  
  
He frowns as he leans heavily on the sink with his forearms, feeling his heart pound against his ribs. He grits his teeth, forces himself to drink a glass of water, and returns to the couch, folding himself into a corner in a way that reminds him heavily of Innovator.  
  
He lets his head drop to his knees and he waits for the tremor in his limbs to go away.  
  
Innovator and Delinquent frown upon his sometimes-habit. It disgusts Delinquent, not that he’d ever say it to Scofflaw’s face, of course, but Scofflaw can see it anyway. Innovator merely gets disappointed, and Scofflaw doesn’t care about that, either. They’re his friends (insofar as he can _ have _friends), but sometimes he just needs to get away from their shit for a while. Away from his own shit. He doesn’t do this often, he thinks heatedly, why should they react so strongly to it. It’s his own body, he can fill it with whatever he likes, thank you so very much.  
  
(But sometimes, like now, he thinks about the looks they wear when he does and it twists in him like a knife.)  
  
Innovator comes by two days into Scofflaw’s fugue, though he hardly pays attention to the tall and nervous man. He only realizes it hours after Innovator is gone, because there’s fresh tea by the kettle and a small mass of springs attached to what appears to be a detonator. He leaves both where they are and returns to the couch, because he does not want to deal with anything right now, he only wants the heavy grey static back. He forces his body to stillness, listens to his own harsh breathing, and forces the want away again. He is the master of himself, not the other way around, and even as the want for it burns in his blood like ice he does not submit to it.  
  
Eventually, the tremors stop and he is in control completely again. Bored to hell and back and in control, just like always, he thinks bitterly. He stops in at one of the better hideouts and showers (the one closer to the casino, everyone in the _ street _is on his payroll), changes into a fresh set of clothing and leaves again. He steadfastly ignores the phone, because he does not want to listen to Innovator’s stumbling accusations or Delinquents roar of irritation. He leaves, because he is so _ bored _, he needs to find something to do.  
  
He wanders the streets and back alleys without a destination, sinks into the desperate thrum of the downtrodden like a saviour, a saint in black, an angel with the smile of the devil. He makes the tiny lives brighter, throws everything into sharp relief, which only helps hide the knife or the needle or the gun. He can read their vices plainly on their faces, he smiles knowingly at them, keeps their secrets close to him. A promise, though one deliberately misleading.  
  
He finds a nice, quiet, abandoned building, and he waits. He is very, _ very _good at blending with his surroundings, it’s one of his specialties. He understands how to act and how _ not _to act, because he watches people and he reads them, and he is very good at feigning just about everything under the sun. It’s dark by the time the downtrodden and desperate and needy come creeping in, but that’s fine. He operates better in the dark, when there’s shadows to hide him and the oppressive atmosphere of night to muffle his movements. He picks out his mark in near-total darkness.  
  
She is beautiful, but in a very broken way. It draws him to her, her beautiful imperfection, the scars she so desperately tries to hide, her flinch when any eye settles on her. The impossibly proud way she holds herself, even when she stinks of terror. She is beautiful, and he wants her. It’s easy to get close, of course, the darkness is his natural world. He watches her wipe grime and mud from the crook of an elbow, sees the scars there, pinpricks up and down her veins. She is impossibly beautiful, and it makes him _ smile _.  
  
He didn’t think watching another person shoot up would be as fascinating as it is, but you learn something new every day, as Innovator would say. He watches her face go slack and her smile grow as the drug flows into her, her sanctuary, her safety and her everything. She is one of the broken, and he sees the cracks in her run a mile wide, and he just wants to dip his fingers into them and pry them open, leave her exposed and hurt.  
  
It’s almost too easy to reach out for her, and she doesn’t even flinch as his hand finds her face. Her eyes are wide in the gloom, locked to his own as he smiles slowly at her, draws her to him. He shows her the knife and watches terror bloom and fade in her eyes, drowned out by the drug in her blood and the quiet words he whispers to her. Her blood is hot and sweet and incredibly red on her dirty clothing, his hands, the knife, her face, her  smile .   
  
He sends her into the embrace of Death and she thanks him as she goes, laughter under his hands and happiness in her eyes.  
  
It is, to him, beautifully disgusting, a wrongness that grew so big it somehow became necessary. He sits and watches her corpse for a long while, because she was one of the few, where death was the better option to life, where merely existing was a hurt that could never, ever be erased. He finds some sort of kinship with here in that, he supposes, as he traces her beautiful face with a hand. Her eyes are wide and unseeing, the faint spark of life snuffed clean out of her. His work, but it does not fill the hole that yawns wide inside of him.  
  
He throws the knife away in total disgust, and does not hear the gurgled whimper as it unerringly finds a kill. Useless, wretched, weak, the lot of them, he hates it, hates them  so much, wants to tear them open and show them what it’s really all about. He rifles through the dead junkie’s pockets and finds what he’s looking for, and then he leaves without a word because it’s that or start and never, ever stop.  
  
She had a good dealer, he can tell. Cocaine isn’t nearly one of the more impressive drugs on the streets, doesn’t hold a candle to Dust or Flicker (and one day he is going to find the people who name these things and give them a piece of his mind), and is normally ignored in favour of the more impressive ones. He leaves it in a box hidden neatly in one of the lesser-frequented hideouts, where Innovator would never bother to look. He leaves, before the temptation gets too sweet, leaves it’s siren call behind him safe and sound.  
  
He heads to the casino, because he really should make an appearance, it doesn’t do to let his reputation fall behind. The place is packed, like normal, and loud, which grates on his nerves. He absconds the shit out of the floor to one of the quieter corners, watches the ebb and flow of the crowd. It never lessens, really, just changes, a constant stream of people all needing to be seen, to be admired. His smile is thin and humourless, because it’s all the same, different driving desperation's all leading towards the same goal. He could reach out and pluck any string, begin someones absolute destruction by their own hands. His boredom is a gaping pit, with him at the edge, ready to plunge down into the dark water and never come back.  
  
He ignores it, turns his attention to the big players on the casino floor, the people with money and influence, people dancing to his strings without ever seeing his hands at them. He chooses one at random, sends one of the girls down to him, watches her flirt and laugh and send the poor fool up. He doesn’t  really _know_ who Scofflaw is, just the rumours and the half-truths, which works in his favour. Scofflaw smiles and laughs and makes all the right smalltalk, winds the poor sod through with faint strings, glimmering suggestions behind words. The small-time politician doesn’t even know what he’s gotten into, responding too openly to Scofflaw’s idle conversation, interest burning in him like a fire.  
  
This man wants more than he’s got or ever could have, and Scofflaw can see it as a fine split, glowing brightly and desperate in him, endless wanting. It’s somewhere to pry open, at the very least. So Scofflaw laughs easily and sends the fool away with the flapper he was so keen on, watches the split open wider, a weakness to exploit and use until nothing was left.  
  
It doesn’t interest Scofflaw nearly as much as it should, not nearly _ enough_. But he knows how the game is played, and the payoff will be worth it, in time. He’s almost out of the building when Innovator catches up to him, eyes wide and shadows deep under them. The finger-wide cracks he sees in Innovator is too much, he just wants to pry them open and see the man beneath them. His fingers ache for it, but he doesn’t so much as reach out to the taller man.  
  
“What d’you want, Inny?” Scofflaw keeps his cool, flashes the nervous man a winning smile, artfully faked.   
  
“Y-yes, that is, um, hello Scofflaw.” Ah, yes, Scofflaw thinks, I am being rude again.  
  
“Yes, hello. What do you want?” He ignores the beckoning door, turns his back to it so he can watch Innovator in full. The taller mans lips twist in what some would call a smile but Scofflaw knows is a grimace. Definitely rude, then. Scofflaw’s smile is a little truer this time.  
  
“We were - Delinquent and I, I m-mean, we -” Scofflaw watches Innovator choke down the word _ are _before continuing “- we were w-worried.” Not Delinquent, Scofflaw knows, just Innovator. Scofflaw closes his eyes so he doesn’t see the lines of hurt glowing bright, and shrugs.  
  
“Jus’ been busy, y’know how it is.” Even without looking Scofflaw can see the hopeful smile on Innovator’s face, and the urge to dash his hopes there is great. Scofflaw knows how to deal with that, folds the bright gleaming edges of his words down into something less hurtful. “Still am, actually. You doin’ anything tomorrow night?” Watching the smile on Innovator’s face is painful, because it shows the cracks in him that run bone deep, wide enough for tooth and knife.  
  
“Er, n-not really.” Innovator tries so hard to disguise the blind hope in his voice, and almost manages to do it completely, though it still cuts Scofflaw.   
  
“Great. I’ll see y’then, we’ll make a night of it, how’s that sound?” Scofflaw’s voice is calm and collected, even if he can barely hide the tremble of want in his hands, the hot rushing ache in his blood. He waits for Innovator to stumble through his goodbye and then all but flees, removing the source of his want from his sight. It would be so simple to break Innovator, _so_ very easy, but he doesn’t, keeps his hands off and his sight turned resolutely away, no matter how much he wants it, _ needs  _it.   
  
So he escapes, flees from the bright cracks and Innovator’s brilliant hopeful smile and everything in between, flees to his own apartment, the real one, not one of the seven he keeps to throw people off his trail. The place is dark and quiet, somewhere to forget the day in. He falls onto his couch and disregards the ache in his back, buries his face in the cushions (brown, neat, somewhat out of place but gifts from Doxy, not that he’d ever tell her he kept them) and tries to drown out the pounding of his heart.  
  
He’s not successful at all.  
  
Three hours later he rolls off the couch and stalks into his kitchen, searches the top of the drink cabinet (which dominates almost an entire wall, but hey, he’s Peccant _ fucking _Scofflaw, he can have whatever he wants) for one of the better whiskeys. He cracks the bottle and pours himself a double measure, dragging a chair out from the table to sit. The apartment is quiet and dim, and as he drinks it gets  progressively quieter and dimmer until the silence is a cacophony that pounds against his ears and the darkness hurts his eyes. He puts his head in his hands and stays like that until the moons are hanging high in the sky, glaring down like the mismatched eyes of some brooding cosmic beast.  
  
He leaves his empty glass and half-finished bottle where it is, abandons his apartment in a crack of violet fire. He cannot stand reminders of _ people _right now, can’t stave off the screaming need to ruin someone so completely they welcome the knife or the bullet with a smile. He wants and  wants , the searing ache in his blood a sweet burn that twists like a knife buried in his gut. The alleyway he arrives in is deserted and dark, layers of grime and refuse piled in corners and overflowing into his path. He doesn’t stay long, exits into a slightly cleaner but no less dark street. A streetlight flickers at the end of the uneven road, hissing and spitting sparks every now and again. He lights a cigarette under it, brushes sparks from his coat when they land.  
  
 _Devil at a crossroads_ , he thinks, and his smile is dark and knife sharp in the flickering light. His shadow is thrown long, and for a brief second as the light above him flares bright it shares his smile, glittering white and deadly. It’s not hard to find a mark, really, the problem is _ too many_ of them, all crowded together, each and every one of them seething with fine cracks that burn bright and hot.   
  
In the end, it’s not hard to choose someone, not at all. He can see what they crave and he can play them like a master, draws his target out of the crowd with half-promises and deliberately misleading comments. It really is too easy, he thinks, blood on his hands and the alleyway wall and the hard concrete at his feet. The heat has not left the body (just a body now, never a person again, he _ made sure _of that) and it’s too hot when he lifts it from where it fell, drags the corpse further back into the darkness. The violet fire he calls to him is hungry, hungrier than himself, and it leaves nothing behind as it consumes the blood and the bone and the  remains, nothing but a scorch mark like an open lotus to tell of its passing.  
  
And still the  want burns in his chest, unquenched and demanding. He all but wails in fury as he dives back into the crowd, the fire fanning his want for oblivion and worse, black fury throttling his charm and alerting his next victim of his intent.  
  
Inevitably, they try to run. It only makes him angrier, the chase, and when he goes in for the kill the man _ begs_, as if he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with, as if he has a  chance. Scofflaw doesn’t realize he’s roaring his fury to the star-studded night until the blood is cooling again on his hands. His knuckles are split, hands aching from being clenched so tightly into fists. He tastes bile and blood, smells nothing but the cloying copper red all around him and _ still it’s not enough_. Yet another suit ruined and nothing to show for it.  
  
The shadows roil around him as he winks out of sight, violet fire claiming another corpse as Scofflaw tries to flee from his disgust and scorching hate.  
  
It follows him, of course,  _of course_ , he breaks two bottles in an attempt to drown the sweet want in alcohol. Nothing works, not until he searches for the little wooden box with its secret cargo of static bliss. He stares at the syringe and the bottle, hands clenched on the edge of the table until his split knuckles leak red over white again. He rolls up his left sleeve, still sticky with blood, wipes away the slick mess in the crook of his elbow and then pours the untouched alcohol in his glass over it, because he’s not that goddamn stupid. He knows how diseases work, Innovator’s done  _more_ than enough to educate him about it. The syringe is clean and blessedly cool in his hand, so light but full of heavy promise.  
  
He stares at it for a long while, considering, eyes fixed on the sharp tip with its bead of liquid nothingness. He  wants, still, hard and demanding in his chest, the yawning pit in his soul tearing wider and wider and  _no no no  _ Silently he begs himself,  _please, now, let it take me and never let me go_ , and still he waits, until the want is a physical pain that twists and boils in his blood. The pinch of the needle is nothing, _ nothing_, the precursor to heavy grey oblivion.  
  
The needle slips from nerveless fingers, cracks against the floor but it doesn’t matter, not now, nothing matters but the way his want burns through pain into the sweet territory on the other side, gratifying and _ lovely _like nothing else. Scofflaw pulls himself up, leans heavily on the table, takes a breath that tastes sweeter than any he’s taken before. The world narrows down from the _ city _to the  _street _ to the  _building _ to  _here_ , the room that surrounds him and cradles him in grey shadow and soft predawn light. Cool relief pours through him, everything he could have wanted, lets his shoulders fall from their tense hunch, draws the thrum of tight-wound energy from his limbs until he sees it pooling liquid and black on the floor beneath his feet.  
  
He almost laughs, but the bark turns into a strangled sob that gets lodged deep in his throat. He lets it no further, swallows it down until he can breath evenly again. The couch is inviting and soft, the steely light spreading shadows across it that wrap him up and hold him tight as he sinks into them. He folds his arms across his chest, ignores the slick shifting of bloodied fabric, focuses only on the greying static that gathers in the crook of his elbows. It spreads up his arms in waves and tingles pleasantly in the tips of his fingers, beats through him in time with each beat of his heart.  
  
There’s a soft click from the doorway and Scofflaw looks up, vision blurring at the sudden burst of motion. The key in his hand is ice cold and heavy, but he wraps his fingers around it anyway, because he is Peccant Scofflaw and no-one gets the drop on him, not ever. Scout stares at him from the doorway, expression unreadable but somehow, sad.  
  
That’ll never do. Scofflaw clears his throat, opens his mouth to speak, but the words won’t come and so he lays there, head lolling against his shoulder and the arm of the chair. Scout shifts, uncomfortable, keyring in his hand - not a gun, even in his current state Scofflaw can see that, but where did he get the keys for here anyway?   
  
“You’ve been gone a … while.” Scout’s voice is full of hesitance, the usual spitfire lacking from his words. He looks concerned - but why? Why should he be? Scofflaw struggles to sit up, forces numbed arms to obey him. He manages, after a false start, and he can see Scout twitch as if the shorter man wants to help. Doesn’t, though, remains in the doorway, plainly visible and _deliberately_ so; as if he’s had experience with something like this before. It makes Scofflaw want to scream at Scout, drive him away, bring him closer, anything to stop the gentle look of concern and worry in his eyes.  
  
“So?” Scofflaw’s voice is harsher than he had originally intended, biting fury still present under the cold numbness. Scout flinches, then slowly takes a step forward, then another. Scofflaw can do nothing but watch, pressed tight into the corner of the couch with his gun still trained on the detective. Scout tosses his keys away, spreads his hands and turns them palm up. _ Safe_, he radiates, not a threat, not someone here to needle at Scofflaw until he’s sick of words.  
  
Hah. _ Needle_.  
  
Scout’s hand closes around the barrel of the revolver, the other coming to rest against Scofflaw’s wrist. The shorter man keeps his eyes on the mobster’s face, lets his hands rest without trying to take the weapon at all. Scofflaw just stares at him, pupils narrowed to pinpoints and teeth bared as if he could warn away Scout with that alone. His hand does not shake, though his knuckles go pale in an attempt to keep it that way.  
  
“Hey, come on, it’s just me.” Scout’s voice is soft, as if unwilling to break the tension between him and Scofflaw, despite the gun and the feral gleam of rage in the taller mobster’s eyes. The silence stretches between them until Scofflaw closes his eyes as if in defeat. Scout removes the gun from his hand, places it carefully at the small table beside the couch. Within reach, as if the entire point wasn’t to disarm Scofflaw in the first place.  
  
The mobster can’t make heads or tails of it, it’s too much, he just wants to be alone ( _don’t leave me_ ), wants the comforting grey back. His jaw works as if he’s about to say something, eyes closed to the sympathy in Scout’s own, but nothing comes, no words to make sense of the situation, no barbs to drive the other man away. Scofflaw hears the rustle of cloth as Scout stands, opens his eyes when he feels the shorter man sit beside him.  
  
The silence is all but deafening, so Scofflaw opens his mouth to fill it.  
  
“You’re not going to -” He’s cut off as Scout punches him lightly in the shoulder, the shorter man grumbling something that might have once been  _shut up you idiot_. He falls silent again, a surge of - something - rushing through him only to die cold in the embrace of the drug in his system.  
  
“I … don’t like it, no.” Scout’s voice holds the silence at bay, warm and just bright enough in the dark room to draw Scofflaw’s gaze. “But, well, y’not an idiot, right? There’s gotta be a reason and …” Scout pauses, meets Scofflaw’s gaze. The shorter man is obviously uncomfortable, hands twisting into the lines of his coat and a scowl on his face. “I fuckin’ care, alright? I hate seein’ya like this.” The words are snarled, an unwilling confession that makes him shift uncomfortably.  
  
“Why should you?” Scofflaw’s voice is weary and borders on defeated, the words heavy in the air. Scout glares at him, he can read the irritation as plain as day.   
  
“Because I fuckin’ do, asshole.” Scofflaw almost laughs at that, but he doesn’t, because the look on Scout’s face is less anger and more _ defeat_. He’s seen that look before, many times, normally the one to draw it out of people. Thinking properly is hard, his thoughts get scattered before he can properly gather them together, the drug doing its best to drown him in it. For the first time in a  long time Scofflaw ignores it, the temptation to sink down into sweet grey nothing less powerful than the equally grey man before him.  
  
Scofflaw sees _ desire _and past actions better left forgotten in everyone. It’s one of the reasons he’s so successful in his work, he knows the best place to apply pressure to get people to crack, knows how to pry open their dark secrets and fill them with worse. He sees the fine lines in Scout, thin disappointments and bitter anger at the world and the people in it, but instead of blazing fiercely they simply glow with pale steel grey light. Not scars of the past but badges of honour, reminders of what has happened to him and for him. Bound together by everything that makes Scout _ Scout_, iron bands that constantly remind him of what he could lose.  
  
It is utterly fascinating and entirely different, but Scofflaw cannot bring himself to care, because Scout is not looking at him in disgust or pity or fury, just the slow burn of _ want_, the want to help and hold and make things better.  
  
Scofflaw sees the pale iron cracks in Scout’s armor and does not wish to sink blade or tooth or claw into them, does not wish to banish the pale grey smile the shorter man shows when he reaches out and finds Scofflaw reaching back.  
  
And that, Scofflaw thinks before the comforting grey of Scout and pre-dawn and tomorrow claim him, is the sweetest burn of them all.

**Author's Note:**

> For Liz/Ealasaid, who watched me put shit in googledocs until I was happy with how it piled up. Delicious person, you, helping me write. YOU'RE AWESOME OKAY???


End file.
